LONG ISLAND JOURNAL

By DIANE KETCHAM

Published: October 24, 1993

Rolling, Rolling, Rolling

THE human bowling ball has come to Long Island. In between the salad course and the four choices of entrees, the guests at Craig Sepler's bar mitzvah in Jericho were being strapped into a giant cage, turned upside down and spun across the room toward a row of giant canvas bowling pins. Splat! A strike. This was fun? "It's the best," said Brooke Goldman, 13, after she had been helped out of the ball and staggered back to her dinner seat.

"Nauseous yet?" Allen Strauss asked Eli Kahn, also 13, who was being spun a few extra times by his friends. It was Mr. Strauss, of Allen Entertainment in Jericho, who supplied the human bowling ball for the bar mitzvah. For 20 years he has supplied unusual amusements at Long Island parties. "You've got to stay on top in the world of party entertainment," he said. "They want gimmicks. For bar mitzvahs the parents want to outdo each other. They're always asking me what's new and exciting."

This week it's the human bowling ball. Next week maybe sumo wrestling in padded suits. "It's on order," Mr. Strauss said. Last year it was Velcro wall-jumping. "You remember that," Mr. Strauss said. "When you wore a Velcro suit and jumped up and stuck yourself on the wall. Fourteen years ago we had the bucking broncos. Insurance on that was amazing."

Insurance on a human bowling ball may be just as high. "Does it meet Federal safety standards?" asked Gerry Gartenberg of New Rochelle as he entered the ball. Mr. Gartenberg, or Cousin Gerry as he was known at the party, was the sole adult to become a human bowling ball. "I usually throw up on the roller coaster," he warned Mr. Strauss as he was turned upside down and sent spinning toward the pins.

"Adults love the human bowling ball," Mr. Strauss said. "It's big in bars and at corporate parties. At one corporate party in Nassau Mr. Strauss recalled, "one guy was put in it, and the other guys at the party took him up to the top of a hill and let him go. He was rolling so fast he missed the pins and everything. He just kept rolling. I saw he was picking up speed and I thought, 'Hey, I've got to stop him.' So I jumped in front of him, but he came at me so fast I just said, 'Oh my God,' and jumped out of the way. The human bowling ball raced past me. It not only crashed into a fence. It went through the fence and hit a tree. When I finally got the guy out he said: 'Wow, what a ride. Let's do that again.' " 2 Artistic L.I.R.R. Stations

Michelangelo painted a church ceiling. Alan Sonfist's art adorns support columns at the Merrick and Bellmore train stations. "This is my Sistine Chapel," Mr. Sonfist said as a train roared by next to his upper-platform art work.

When you specialize in public art, you want your art where the public can see it. That's why Mr. Sonfist's scenic tiles start five feet up on the support columns. "I figured the commuters' heads would be in the way if I made it any lower," he said. Now even short commuters can view a Sonfist as they wait for their trains.

When the artist from Sag Harbor won the Metropolitan Transportation Authority competition "to enhance transit space" at the two stations, he had several obstacles to overcome. "It was an inconvenient canvas he had to work on," said Wendy Feuer, who is in charge of the M.T.A. Arts for Transit program.

It's not like there are long walls on the upper platform. There are basically no walls. So Mr. Sonfist chose the columns and he chose to decorate them with 300 hand-painted ceramic tiles illustrating the history of the two South Shore towns.

"I've divided the tiles into the four seasons," he said. One may be allergy season. Just about every tree, flower and sneeze-provoking plant is represented. As are most of the area wildlife, down to a Merrick squirrel.

Will Feczko of Merrick called the tile work interesting. "But it doesn't move me," he said. "I'm an art student. I want to be a cartoonist." A few Doonsburys on the Merrick platform would be more to Mr. Feczko's liking.

But other commuters seem to appreciate the art. Although there were graffiti on the "Cats" poster, not a Magic Marker has touched the Sonfist. "It's antigraffiti-coated anyway," Ms. Feurer said. "But Long Islanders seem to appreciate train-station art. In Scarsdale commuters are stealing the works."

Maybe it's because Mr. Sonfist's work relates so to the Long Island commuter. One of his tiles is of a passenger pigeon. Shooting the Messenger

How angry are those who drive Long Island's highways? Some people are shooting at the Inform signs. "We have one sign that was shot 32 times," said Bob Rosendahl, director of Inform, an electronic sign system on the Long Island Expressway and the Northern State Parkway.

Mr. Rosendahl of the State Transportation Department keeps the pistol bullets on his desk in Hauppauge as a reminder of the temperament of Long Island motorists. He has about three dozen. The bullets vary in size from .25 caliber to 10 millimeter. Every few days somebody takes a few off his desk, he said, but the supply is always replenished.

"The mechanics grab a handful every time they go to service the signs," he said.

Mr. Rosendahl has an opinion as to who some of the shooters might be. "We do truck inspections," he said. "If we find things, we have to put the trucks out of service. Some of those good old boys that bring their trucks from down South may take exception to that."

He doesn't rule out that the rest of the bullets may come from commuter shooters. "At least we don't have graffiti," he said.

Photos: At Craig Sepler's bar mitzvah, people took turns being human bowling ball. (Lois Raimondo for The New York Times); Ceramic tile murals by Alan Sonfist at the Merrick and Bellmore train stations on the Long Island Rail Road. (Vic DeLucia/The New York Times)